THE EFFECT OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE IS TO ENSURE INEFFICIENCY IN
DOMESTIC LEGISLATION AND ADMINISTRATION.
It is expressing oneself very mildly to say that manhood suffrage
produces inefficiency; rather one may say that inefficiency is of its
very essence. Preparedness is a major essential of the management of our
successful business enterprises, while unpreparedness is a
characteristic feature of our government administration. To take a
concrete and conceded instance. The Spanish war of 1898 found us totally
unprepared for war; without guns, powder, artillery, transports or
officers trained for high command. (Alger, _Spanish-American War_, p.
455.) Our troops in that war were not properly equipped, rationed or
cared for. The cause, says Stickney, was “the wholesale fraud and
corruption which then permeated the entire administrative force in
Washington. That fraud and corruption still continue in full force.” In
the _New York Sun_ of February 7th, 1920, the leading editorial was on
American want of preparedness. The writer said, “We are a people who
will not practice preparedness. We did not prepare for war, we did not
prepare for peace. We have never prepared for anything. But sooner or
later the man that will not prepare must be damned.” This
well-recognized want of foresight in national matters is not an American
failing; it is entirely due to the manhood suffrage habit of voting into
responsible positions men of intrigue and oratory instead of men of
business. Says Reemelin, “There is not a bank, a factory, a store or a
farm, which if managed on the basis of American government would not
impoverish its owner.” (_American Politics_, 1881, p. 324.)
In every department of human activity, including government, the chief
desideratum is efficiency. In the primary struggle for a bare existence,
it is efficiency that wins. The first and principal enemy of man is
Nature; her wildness and inclemency must first be overcome, and food,
shelter and clothing be forced from her bosom at the price of an endless
and ceaseless vigilance. As human society grows older the efficiency
which comes of systematic training becomes more essential to its
maintenance. People may doubt whether the world improves or whether
human existence becomes more precious and enjoyable with the passing of
time, but no one can doubt that life is growing more complicated every
year. The increase of population, the achievements of invention, the
growth of knowledge of our environment, and the cultivation of new
tastes and desires have all tended and are tending with accumulated
force to make life more difficult for the uninstructed and to increase
the necessity for scientific thinking and acting in dealing with new
problems. As stated by Mr. Lowell the specialization of occupations is
brought about by complexity of civilization, growth of accurate
knowledge, progress of invention and the keenness of competition. A few
years ago a private citizen could take up a new business without prior
preparation; he can no longer safely do so. The use of experts is
increasing in business concerns and industrial enterprises. Universities
are erecting new specialized departments. Sixty years ago there was
scarcely a school of engineers in the country; to-day there are many of
them. The inexorable rule of the tendency of the fittest to survive is
still an active force in the world, and the recent struggle with Germany
gave terrible warning that efficiency is more than ever the price of
existence.
Next to the struggle with wild Nature comes the contest with human
disorder and the necessity for government, in order that men may best
secure and enjoy the spoils and fruits achieved from Nature; and again
efficiency is the essential quality. We hear much these days about moral
force; but there is no force but material force; what is usually meant
by moral force is the influence of moral ideas directing action, for
without efficient action, moral ideas will be fruitless. They will not
make crops grow nor cause a machine to operate, nor check the deadly
velocity of a volley of musketry, nor save a sinking ship, nor check a
conflagration; moral force will not win a battle, a campaign or a war,
nor save a nation. Combe in his _Constitution of Man_, long ago pointed
out that a pirate in a good sea-going ship was safer than a missionary
in an unseaworthy one. Moral ideas may serve to give action a right
direction; but training and force are necessary to make it effective;
without training in action and a proper supply of material force, the
moral ideas will never be manifested at all to our senses, and therefore
efficiency in action is the final object of all practical teaching, and
the true test of good government. Governmental efficiency means good
order; wise legislation; foresight in public affairs; the proper
selection of work to be done; the doing it well and expeditiously;
speedy and impartial justice; good home administration generally and
wisdom and firmness in foreign relations. It is difficult to see how a
government which is efficient can be bad, or one which is inefficient
can be good. In fact, efficiency makes more for human happiness than any
other governmental quality. The ultimate object of the creation of the
Federal Union was to secure increased efficiency in government. The old
Confederation had been inefficient and was justly condemned and
abolished; and the present Federal government was therefore established
with powers as stated in the Constitution to levy and carry on war, to
control and promote commerce, to establish and sustain postal facilities
and a national coinage and to secure peace with foreign nations; all of
which purposes might be included in the phrase “national efficiency.”
In an address delivered at Chicago, January 12th, 1918, by Otto H. Kahn,
a patriotic and far-sighted New York business man familiar with German
methods, he truly said:
“One of the main reasons for Germany’s remarkable development in
peace and amazing power of resistance in war, is the way she has
dealt with the complex and difficult problems of economic,
commercial and fiscal policy. She recognized, long since, that such
problems cannot be successfully handled haphazardly or in
town-meeting fashion, or emotionally; still less can they be made
the football of politics. The German way has been to turn such
matters over for study and report to those best qualified by
experience and training, and thus having obtained expert advice to
respect it and in its large outlines to follow it. And appointments
to office are made not on a basis of political affiliations or
personal friendship or social sympathies, but for experience and
tested fitness.”
He is right, and it is a well-recognized fact that German efficiency in
the late war enabled her to make head for over three years against the
most powerful combination of modern times.
Consider the vast importance of the work of our own Congress and of our
state legislatures. Think of what is committed to the charge of these
bodies; reflect for a moment on the importance of our state affairs; our
harbors, canals, railroads, highways, schools, colleges, courts of
justice, penal and charitable institutions, public utilities, all the
manifold commercial, political and criminal legislation of the State;
and then glance at the immense fields of Congressional authority: the
power of declaring war and making treaties; the maintenance and support
of the army and navy; foreign affairs, tariffs; interstate railroads;
the post-office; the federal courts of justice. The human mind is
appalled at the magnitude of the task of properly governing the enormous
population and of safeguarding the immense wealth and interests of the
United States. The future political existence of the country and its
status as a nation may and very probably will depend on the capacity and
ability of its legislators and administrators. Yet but few voters
realize the necessity of business experience and of technical knowledge
to members of the state or national legislatures. It is not
sufficiently considered that by far the greater part of legislative work
is made up of strictly business matters requiring special knowledge.
Take for instance one item of Federal legislation, namely, that relating
to the administration of 200,000 square miles of timbered land owned by
the United States government--an area equal to France--where the people
dwelling or operating in the lower regions derive their water from
wooded uplands: and also relating to another area of 100,000,000 acres
or 150,000 square miles containing petroleum, coal and other minerals.
In these two tracts “The government will henceforth be selling standing
timber to lumbermen, water power for electrical transmission, water for
irrigation rights, and oil, coal, and mineral privileges, on an
ever-increasing scale of magnitude; while it will rent grazing lands
equal in extent to the greater part of the country east of the
Mississippi River.” (_Shaw on Political Problems_, p. 114.)
This case is not exceptional in Congress as may be seen by the following
list, which includes all the important general Federal legislation for
the year 1917, which happens to be the latest at hand:
1. Increasing the membership of the Interstate Commerce Commission,
and increasing the powers of the Commission.
2. Excess Profits Tax on Corporations.
3. Civil Government for Porto Rico.
4. Literary Test for Alien Immigrants.
5. Military Measures, namely, Declaration of War against Germany;
Liberty Bond Issue; Ship and War Material Act; Draft Law; Food
Control; Espionage; War Risk Insurance.
6. Appropriation Bills.
These measures are all of general effect and all require expert
knowledge. It appears from a mere reading of the list that they are such
as to presume and require in the legislators a knowledge of finance;
taxation; shipping; food production; transportation; insurance; and
other subjects.
New York state legislation for 1917 dealt with the following subjects,
all or nearly all relating to business matters: Court officers and
judicial procedure; decedents’ estates; domestic relations, including
marriage and illegitimacy laws; penal and criminal statutes; civil
service laws; state accounting and budget; state police; municipal
government regulations; sales act; warehouse receipt act; partnership;
cold-storage; negotiable instruments; extradition; land registration;
probate of wills; highways and motor vehicles; dog licenses; railroad
crossing protection; commercial regulations relating to trading stamps;
patent medicines; food products; blue sky law; insurance laws;
corporations; regulation of public utilities; conservation of resources;
taxation laws; the care of the insane; building regulations; banking;
education; public health; liquor dealing and labor laws. This list is
not at all exceptional and the public need of trained and informed men
in government service is more apparent every day.
“There is now” (says Willoughby) “demanded on the part of our
lawmakers, not only patriotism and political sagacity of the
highest order, but scientific knowledge, and strict
disinterestedness far beyond that formerly required. Many of the
economic interests that are now discussed in our legislative halls
require, in the highest degree, scholarly research and judgment.”
(_Nature of the State_, p. 416.)
Now, when manhood suffrage was established here as an institution; when,
as the twaddlers like to say, the people took command, it became the
privilege and the duty of the ruling populace to establish and enforce
proper standards of qualification for its representatives and agents.
Its orators professed that they were going to show the world great
results of popular government. The wretched practical results we know.
But what efforts did they make? What have they in fact done in three
generations towards securing efficiency in their elective officers?
Absolutely nothing. If any despot had ever shown such complete disregard
of decency and propriety in his system of appointments as our manhood
suffrage democracy has, he would be held up to public reprobation. Not
only are and have been the state and national legislators and other
elective officials commonplace or below commonplace in character and
ability, but no effort whatever has been made or is being made; no
scheme has been even proposed, whereby to secure men of efficiency for
these important places in the gift of the people. The manhood suffrage
electorates are reckless, unscrupulous and hopelessly behind the age;
they never have recognized the growing need for efficiency. As Lowell
says, “We are training men for all services but that of the public.”
In fact, the scheme of manhood suffrage makes no provision for
efficiency, nor any serious pretence thereof; it ignores it completely
in the selection of its agents and otherwise. Whatever efficiency may be
secured in a democracy is obtained in some way other than by a manhood
suffrage vote. The only test applied by the populace at an election is
the oratorical test, and sometimes not even that. Its favorites at the
polls are the talkers; by talk they become known; by talk they become
candidates; by speeches they gain elections and by speeches they
maintain their places. No one knows or cares whether they can do
anything else but talk. No one ever heard of a candidate for an elective
public office being required to produce proof of his equipment for the
place. A candidate for alderman is not expected to have served an
apprenticeship in any city department; nor to pass an examination in
harbor facilities, sanitation, school management, public lighting,
sewage, water supply, transportation nor any of the departments of city
government. The candidate for mayor of New York is not required to know
the contents of the Charter of the city. Congress is supposed to be the
real governing body in this country, and would be such if it were not so
scandalously incompetent and untrustworthy. But a man who can get by
hook or crook on the machine ticket and can make what the rabble calls
“a rattlin’ good speech” is qualified for a seat in Congress. Whoever
heard of a candidate for Congress or a state legislature being required
to know anything whatever about anything or to have ever done anything
as a prerequisite to his candidacy? Such tests would be inconsistent
with the very theory of manhood suffrage as now entertained. That
standards will ultimately have to be applied even to elective offices if
democracy is to prevail no far-seeing man can doubt. And there is
nothing impracticable about the suggestion. Even now, in the states
where judges are elective, custom requires that the candidate shall have
previously passed an examination for admission to the bar. There is no
reason whatever why all candidates for elective offices should not be
required to be reasonably qualified for the offices they seek; nor why
the electors themselves should not be such persons as are qualified to
vote, and have proved their fitness for the ballot by the record of
their lives in the community. But the essential quality of manhood
suffrage is that it rejects all tests for voters, and so beginning at
the very source of government its anti-efficient influence extends all
along the line, and tends to neutralize every effort to elevate the
standard of democratic administration. Its spirit is directly opposed to
the demand for efficiency in governmental affairs. Efficiency is
exclusive, it applies tests, and rejects those who fail. Beginning with
the voter, manhood suffrage refuses to apply to him any tests whatever,
and denies not only the policy of their application but the right to use
them. It views the elective franchise as the personal belonging of the
individual, even the most ignorant and degraded, to be used to justify
his whim, his pleasure, his spite, his prejudice. The newspapers,
unconsciously perhaps, voice this spirit. We constantly read in the
public press urgent invitations to vote, addressed to the careless or
indifferent in politics, those who presumably have no compelling
opinions and are therefore quite unprepared and unfit to vote. Instead
of being warned of the wrong and danger of frivolous and ignorant
voting, they are urged by the newspapers to go to the polls as if to
take part in an amateur baseball game: “Come, join in; even if you don’t
do it well; it’s the national game! There are prizes too, the spoils;
and though you don’t compete yourself you may have the fun of seeing
them distributed, and root for the victors.” People are more careless in
voting for high officials than in hiring an office boy. They vote for
men whom they do not know even by sight; whose very names are
unfamiliar; and are usually quite unashamed of trifling with the
suffrage in a manner deserving punishment. This is one result of our
cheapening of the franchise.
If the reader will peruse the list of measures passed or considered by
Congress or his state legislature for the current year, he will perhaps
be able to judge whether his representative in Washington or in the
state capital is competent to deal with such matters. Not one in a
hundred is fit for the job. For most of the subjects of legislation the
average public representative has had no previous training whatever. And
if after long service he happens to become proficient in any of them,
the chances are that he will be sent back to private life by the vote of
a manhood suffrage constituency under orders of the district boss. As a
consequence it is well known that the legislative output is and has been
for generations past very inferior indeed. The abuse of state
legislation is dealt with elsewhere in this volume; it is so notorious
that it needs no proof, and is so vast that its complete discussion is
far beyond the compass of this work. The reader experienced in politics
is probably well aware that Ostrogorski is right, in his brief summary
(p. 374): “The laws are made with singular incompetence and
carelessness. Their number is excessive, running into volumes each
session; but they are mostly laws of local or private interest. The
motives which enter into the making of these laws are often of an
obviously mercenary nature.” (_Democracy._)
Before the German war the state legislative output in the United States
was about fifteen thousand enactments per year, of which about one-third
were public or general laws and the remaining two-thirds special and
local statutes. This year it is probably greater. In a recent single
session of Congress upwards of twenty thousand bills and resolutions
were introduced, of which about five thousand were passed, including
nearly two thousand public or general laws. Probably nine-tenths of this
legislation is unnecessary and a large part of it is undoubtedly
vicious.
The just resentment of America’s business men is being constantly voiced
at the manner in which business interests are being flouted by the
doctrinaires and demagogues to whom our political system entrusts the
reins of government. The following extracts from the address of Otto H.
Kahn, before referred to, will serve to illustrate some phases of this
attitude of business towards politics:
“A somewhat similar case is the railroad legislation which Congress
enacted under the Taft administration. That legislation represented
the tearing to shreds and the subsequent recasting, patching up and
ill-devised piecing together by Congress of a carefully thought
out, though, in my opinion, by no means faultless measure, which
had been introduced with the backing of the Administration. You all
know the result. The spirit of enterprise in railroading was
killed. Subjected to an obsolete and incongruous national policy,
hampered, confined, harassed by incessant, minute, narrow,
multifarious and sometimes contradictory regulations, that great
industry began to fall away. Initiative on the part of those in
charge became chilled, the free flow of investment of capital was
halted, creative activity was stopped, growth was stifled, credit
was crippled....”
“What we business men protest against is ignorance, shallow thought
or doctrinairism assuming the place belonging to expert opinion and
tested practical ability. We protest against sophomorism rampant,
strutting about in the cloak of superior knowledge, mischievously
and noisily, to the disturbance of quiet and orderly mental
processes and sane progress. We protest against sentimental,
unseasoned, intolerant and cocksure ‘advanced thinkers’ being given
leave to set the world by the ears and with their strident and
ceaseless voices to drown the views of those who are too busy doing
to indulge in much talking. And finally do we protest against
demagogism, envy and prejudice, camouflaging under the flag of war
necessity and social justice in order to wage a campaign through
inflammatory appeal, misstatement and specious reasoning to punish
success, despoil capital and harass business.”
And further on:
“We deny the suggestion that patriotism, virtue and knowledge
reside primarily with those who have been unsuccessful, those who
have no practical experience of business, or, be it said with all
respect, with those who are politicians or office holders.”
This remonstrance of Mr. Kahn is but a sample which might be multiplied
by the hundreds. It is typical of a constant stream of complaints which
business men in all parts of the country are continually uttering. The
universal testimony of our merchants, manufacturers and financiers is
that neither at the federal or state capitols do they find men either
capable of understanding the rules and operations of business or willing
to study them, or interested in the business prosperity of the people.
If the reader will but examine a list of members of any legislative body
he will understand the cause of this deplorable situation. Let him study
the names of the delegation at present representing in the state
legislature the immense interests of the City of New York, her commerce,
manufactures, wealth and population. She ought to be represented there
by the class of honorable and successful active or retired merchants;
financiers of high standing; manufacturers of note and ability and
leaders in the professions; by publicists; scholars, and men of the
first prominence in labor organizations; to be or to have been a member
of a state legislature should be a badge of honor. On that list he will
probably find not one name known outside the ranks of petty ward
politicians; and men of the high character above described would feel it
as a stigma to have it said that they had served in a legislative body.
Next, as to the judiciary. It is the property of evil to spread, and it
is one of the curses of the manhood suffrage system, that not content
with control of the legislature which is properly elective, it seizes
upon and degrades the judicial and administrative branches of government
which are both naturally appointive. Its effect upon the judicial bench
has been necessarily bad, frequently covering the ermine with the mire
of politics. During the period from 1865 to 1873 so many of the judges
sitting in New York City were notoriously unfit and corrupt, that their
doings furnished material for a great scandal. The state supreme court
judges, elected by manhood suffrage, were the most conspicuous sinners,
but many of the inferior judges, including those appointed by a manhood
suffrage mayor, were equally unworthy. Bryce visited one of those
courts, probably about 1870, and this is what he saw:
“An ill-omened looking man, flashily dressed and rude in demeanor,
was sitting behind a table; two men in front were addressing him;
the rest of the room was given up to disorder. Had one not been
told that he was a judge of the highest court of the city, one
might have taken him for a criminal. His jurisdiction was unlimited
in amount, and though an appeal lay from him to the Court of
Appeals of the State, his power to issue injunctions put all the
property in the district at his mercy.”
He further declares that at that time there were on the bench in New
York City, bar room loafers, broken-down Tombs attorneys, needy
adventurers, whose want of character made them absolutely dependent on
their patrons. “They did not regard social censure, for they were
already excluded from decent society. Impeachment had no terrors for
them, since the state legislature, as well as the executive machinery of
the city, was in the hands of their masters. It would have been vain to
expect such people, without fear of God or man before their eyes, to
resist the temptations which capitalists and powerful company could
offer.” And further:
“A system of client robbery had sprung up, by which each judge
enriched the knot of disreputable lawyers who surrounded him; he
referred cases to them, granted them monstrous allowances in the
name of costs, gave them receiverships with a large percentage,
and so forth; they in turn either at the time sharing the booty
with him, or undertaking to do the same for him when he should have
descended to the Bar and they have climbed to the Bench. Nor is
there any doubt that criminals who had any claim on their party
often managed to elude punishment. The police, it was said, would
not arrest such an offender if they could help it; the District
Attorney would avoid prosecuting; the court officials, if public
opinion had forced the attorney to act, would try to pack the jury;
the judge, if the jury seemed honest, would do his best to procure
an acquittal; and if, in spite of police, attorney, officials, and
judge, the criminal was convicted and sentenced, he might still
hope that the influence of his party would procure a pardon from
the governor of the State, or enable him in some other way to slip
out of the grasp of justice. For governor, judge, attorney,
officials, and police were all of them party nominees; and if a man
cannot count on being helped by his party at a pinch, who will be
faithful to his party?” (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, pp. 637,
639, 640.)
Although this extremely degraded judiciary has passed away, yet the
whole story is as pertinent today as it ever was, for the vileness Bryce
describes was the result of the operation of manhood suffrage in a large
city; and the same causes are still in existence. In practice in the
great cities the higher state judges are usually selected by the
political bosses; and the election is often a mere form, or at most a
contest between rival bosses in which the public takes but a languid and
futile interest. When the boss is a rich man as often happens in a great
city, he gets to know some able lawyers and sometimes makes fairly good
selections for the higher judicial vacancies. This is far better than
the populace would be likely to do if left to themselves. Another means
of protection for judicial honor has been the influence of an educated
bar, endeavoring to enforce the traditions of the past, and the examples
of other civilized countries to the effect that judges should be exempt
from political influence and bias. But when all is said and done it is
largely a matter of luck even in the highest courts whether the judges
are fit or otherwise. That the highest judges are still “bossed” is not
a mere vulgar notion. How can they escape? In the election for judges of
the highest New York courts in 1919, the charge that certain judicial
candidates were “bossed” was publicly and persistently made by ex-judges
and leading lawyers.
Of the California judges in 1877, Bryce says:
“The judges were not corrupt, but most of them, as was natural,
considering the scanty salaries assigned to them, were inferior
men, not fit to cope with the counsel who practised before them.
Partly owing to the weakness of juries, partly to the intricacies
of the law and the defects of the recently adopted code, criminal
justice was halting and uncertain, and malefactors often went
unpunished. It became a proverb that you might safely commit a
murder if you took the advice of the best lawyers.” (_American
Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 430.)
The most determined efforts of the lawyers of our great cities to make a
manhood suffrage constituency understand a judicial election have been
complete failures. It is sometimes amusing to see the straits to which
lawyers and their intelligent friends are driven to keep the judiciary
from degradation. In New York, for instance, where the judges are
elected for fourteen-year terms, the lawyers hit upon the plan of
demanding that sitting judges whose terms expire should always be
renominated by the bosses, on pain of active opposition to the entire
ticket, including their proposed successors. This really involved a
violation of the spirit of the constitution, for it aimed at a life
tenure for judges instead of the fourteen years fixed by that
instrument, to which these lawyers had sworn allegiance. It further
involved the absurdity of allowing the boss to select a judge, but never
to drop him, no matter what his record; and it resulted that a candidate
might be opposed by the bar the first time, but if elected would
certainly be supported by them the next time without in either instance
any real investigation of his record, character or attainments. All this
absurdity has been and is committed by intelligent lawyers in their
efforts to avoid the risk of manhood suffrage popular elections of high
judges. The reader can judge from this how lively the fear of popular
judicial elections must be in the hearts of the lawyers of the city of
New York.
There is of course something repulsive in the very thought of a judge of
a high court being selected in an election contest, and of his owing his
place to the suffrages of a low populace. And then, there is the
practical objection to an elective judiciary, that a judge’s qualities
are special and such as can only be ascertained upon personal
acquaintance and by men of superior attainments. The office is properly
an appointive one, but with manhood suffrage in play, some of the worst
selections for the bench have been made by state governors, in order to
reward followers or venal newspapers. There is really no remedy and no
way of taking the judiciary out of politics while either the judge
himself or the appointing power is created by manhood suffrage. The
trail of the serpent is over everything that comes from that quarter. As
for the lower courts, the selections of their judges have been
scandalous; men have been put on the bench who were ignorant of the
first principles of law; drunkards, reckless politicians, ignorant,
dishonest, uncouth, unmannerly specimens who have sought judicial office
because they had no taste for hard work, or because their ignorance or
habits were such that they were unable to earn an honest living at the
bar. Some of them are notoriously owned by politicians. Senator Breen
says that “After being whispered about among a coterie of closest
friends it becomes well-known that this particular politician owns a
certain judge and can get him to do anything.... The miserable creature
who is robed in judicial honors reposes in perfect ignorance of the
ignominy which his acts of dishonor are bringing on his name. This has
been the fate of many a judge.” (_Thirty Years in New York Politics_, p.
25.) A New York newspaper in the Tweed days said that there was no
quarter of the civilized world where the name of a New York judge is not
a hissing and a byword. The New York bench has on the whole improved
since 1871 when this was written; but it is very far from being what it
ought to be, and its attainment of a high standard is impossible under
manhood suffrage.
Taking the judicial system of the United States as a whole for the last
three quarters of a century it must be said that the administration of
justice has been inefficient; a large percentage of the judges have been
and are unfit for their places; clerks and sheriffs corrupt and
incapable; there have been chronic and intolerable delays; juries almost
everywhere carelessly selected, and usually incompetent and morally weak
or dishonest; inferior magistrates corrupt and unfit; many of the trial
judges weak and slow and referees and masters grasping and extortionate.
Congress and the several states have adopted the stupid policy of
underpaying the bench, apparently on the theory that any lawyer is
capable of being a judge; and of employing as few judges as possible in
order to save some of the money elsewhere so wickedly squandered. These
foolish economies to offset reckless waste are characteristic of the
lower classes; they are given effect by universal suffrage, and
harmonize with the whole inefficient outfit. The result is that in many
cities important cases are on the trial calendars for months and even
years waiting to be heard because there are not judges enough to hear
them promptly; erroneous decisions of weak and ignorant judges keep the
appellate courts busy ordering reversals and granting new trials; and a
controversy that ought to be disposed of in a few months may drag along
for years and until some of the witnesses have disappeared or died and
others have forgotten all they once knew about the case. Mr. Bryce, in
his _American Commonwealth_, treats the subject of the judiciary with
great circumspection, and with an evident desire to speak well of the
American bench, but is unable after “careful inquiries” to answer even
in the matter of honesty for more than “nearly all the northern and most
of the southern and western states.” He says that “In a few states,
probably six or seven in all, suspicions have at one time or another
within the last twenty years attached to one or more of the Supreme
judges,” and has “never heard of a state in which more than two or three
judges were the objects of distrust at the same time.” It is worth while
to stop to realize what this amounts to: from twelve to twenty dishonest
judges of the highest state courts in the United States, actually
sitting day after day, dealing out infamy under the name of justice;
criminals put on the bench by the election machinery; a judiciary in six
or seven states so tainted that the foul smell reached the nostrils of a
visitor from other lands. This state of things makes one suspect a low
standard for the entire judiciary, or at least for that of each of those
six or seven suspected states, for it indicates the unscrupulous power
of politics. In a state where even two or three judges sell or barter
justice for politics, who will not suspect that others, promoted by the
same bosses, or by the same system, are incompetent, careless or
otherwise unfit?
The third class of public officers, being that which is generally styled
administrative, ought not, any more than the judiciary, to be affected
by politics and should therefore never be chosen by popular election.
The function of the legislator is to enact new measures in accordance
with the progressive needs of the people, and he should therefore to a
certain extent consult their wishes in framing legislation. But the
administrative official is there to obey and to enforce the law as it
exists; his duty is merely that of an honest, painstaking expert, and
his office should be appointive and should never be treated as
political. This distinction between legislative and administrative
officials is plain and wide to the vision of any man with the least
knowledge of government; and yet in preparing the constitutions and laws
with which they deign to provide us, it is frequently ignored by
politicians in pursuit of political power and patronage; the pretense
being the furtherance of democratic institutions and the rule of the
people. And so in the great state of New York the attorney general, the
state engineer and surveyor, the secretary of state and the state
treasurer have been made and are elective officials; and since female
suffrage has been established in that state we have the edifying
spectacle of those important offices being filled and their incumbents
chosen, not by the governor of the state, nor by any body of experienced
lawyers, engineers, business men or others somewhat acquainted with the
workings of the respective offices and candidates, but by four millions
of miscellaneous people; including motormen, hod carriers, servant
maids, seamstresses, society ladies, firemen, boiler makers, farm
laborers, gamblers, loafers, etc., of whom ninety-nine out of a hundred
have no idea what an attorney general or a state engineer is, nor what
are the duties of any of these officials, and would be unable the day
after election even to name the candidates for whom they voted for those
offices. In fact the gross ineptitude of the institution of manhood
suffrage is nowhere more strikingly apparent than in the election of
state officers in the Empire State.
Nowhere in private life is the principle of popular election applied to
the choice of administrators or managers; such folly is confined to
public affairs. The merchant service and the army and navy are not
conducted upon the principle of universal suffrage; neither the crew nor
the passengers, nor both united, are permitted to select the officers of
a ship; nor are the rank and file permitted to vote for their officers
in any navy, or in any well-disciplined army. The sick man does not
choose his physician, nor the business man his lawyer or broker by
taking the votes of his neighbors or friends. In all these instances,
and in every similar case of necessary care in making a choice of an
agent, the prerequisite which is insisted upon as first indispensable
and controlling is efficiency; and such efficiency can only be obtained
by intelligent selection. Administrative officials should always be
possessed of character, experience, intelligence and other qualities
which go to produce efficiency. Such possessions can only be recognized
by those who are personally acquainted with the candidates and are
competent to pass upon these qualities. Their selection should
preferably be made by those who are to supervise their conduct in
office, and to keep them up to the standard required. An appointing body
is able to consider all the candidates who present themselves or whose
friends present them; the electorate can only consider two or three to
any advantage. The appointing body can examine personally all the
candidates; the voters are incapable of properly examining any, and have
neither the means nor the leisure for the careful scrutiny needed to
estimate professional or expert qualifications. All administrative
officers should therefore be placed in office by appointment of their
superiors or supervisors who are to be held responsible for their
conduct in office, and never by popular election at the polls. Of
course, the politicians may reply, though they are not likely to do so,
that the election of these state officers is a sham; that they are
usually far from being the nondescripts whom the populace might choose
if left unbossed; that they are really selected in secret long before
election, by a political autocracy, which taking advantage of the
ignorance and indifference of the mass of voters, sees to it that the
powers and patronage of these offices go in the direction of selected
favorites of the machine, not destitute of ability. This is at least
partly true, for the tendency of manhood suffrage is to turn the
elections into mere formal ratifications of the will of the bosses. And
a machine appointment to an administrative office usually results much
better for the public interest than a choice by manhood suffrage,
especially where there are spoils in sight and where rival organizations
sharpen their claws, as for instance in a mayoralty contest in a large
city. Then ensues a real struggle, heightened by newspaper lies and
clamor, with a tendency to give the victory to that one of the factions
whose managers are most artful, impudent and mendacious. In the
_American Popular Science Review_, February, 1918, p. 121, Edgar Dawson,
speaking of the election of a city mayor, an office which under any
rational system is treated as administrative, says:
“Does it require argument to prove to thoughtful people that wise
choice is not likely to be made in the midst of the revel of
hysteria, sham, demagogy, falsehood and ignorance, which we call a
direct popular election of administrative officers? Is choice
likely to be wise when nine out of ten of those who make it know
nothing of the candidates they support or oppose, and are equally
ignorant of the work the candidates ask the privilege of doing?”
Thus arises a question difficult to decide, between appointments by a
machine, and those of a machine-directed populace.
The immense importance of scientific management of cities is so obvious
as not to need discussion. It is set forth in detail in a book published
in 1918 by M. L. Cooke, Director of Public Works in Philadelphia, to
which the reader is referred. The author states that “Governmental work,
Federal, State and Municipal, is still almost exclusively in the
unsystematized stage.”
Here is an extract from a competent writer, a man of actual experience
in city matters:
“_When the Public Builds Buildings._ Twenty-seven million dollars
for a City Hall that was to have cost $7,000,000; no water on the
second floor of a public bath because the water mains were made too
small; an emergency order, without competitive bids, for repairing
a police precinct, given to a contractor sixteen miles away;
$20,000 for cleaning a City Hall that could be kept clean for
$2,000; fifteen employees dead from tuberculosis in one
germ-infested, dark, unclean room. What’s the use of multiplying
examples?” (_Woman’s Part in Government_, by W. H. p. 330.)
The lack of efficiency in Federal administration which has been
notorious for ninety years is due to the malign influence of manhood
suffrage which renders it impossible to enforce standards of capacity.
What Faguet calls “the religion of incompetency” is displayed even in
the presidential appointments where men are moved about from office to
office like checkers on a board, and put in places for which they have
had no previous training whatever. This method of appointment is in
itself convincing proof, not merely of the unfitness of the
appointments, but of the vice of the whole system of selection. A jack
of all trades is master of none. What would be said of the fitness of a
man to superintend a watch-making establishment who had never worked at
the trade or business of maker or of dealer in watches, and whose entire
experience had consisted of one or two years in each of the employments
of carpenter, dentist, cook and piano tuner? Yet the practice of
politics sanctions just such appointments as that would be. Even for
great offices requiring the highest skill, preparatory training or
experience is rarely required. Looking back from 1918; out of forty-four
United States Secretaries of State from the beginning of our history,
thirty-three were lawyers; only three or four had any previous
diplomatic experience; out of the sixteen last Secretaries of the
Treasury, twelve were lawyers and only four bankers; out of the last
thirteen Postmasters General, only one had ever before been in the Post
Office Department; of forty-nine Secretaries of War in our history
thirty-five were lawyers; the others were editors, bankers, etc., and
only three or four had any previous military experience; out of
thirty-eight Secretaries of the Navy twenty-seven were lawyers, three
authors, and seven were business men. Not one of them all had any naval
experience prior to taking control of the United States Navy. A former
Secretary of the Navy gave the writer to understand that he had been
appointed principally to distribute the patronage and to hold the state
politically in line. Now, while it is quite true that a knowledge of the
law and a training in the art of reading and understanding law is
extremely important to any cabinet official, yet surely a lawyer cannot
be expected to build ships, conduct a post-office business, direct the
diplomacy of a great nation or carry on war properly without any
appropriate previous training whatever. Yet under a system of government
by manhood or universal suffrage untrained men are sure to get these
high appointments because they are vote-getters and can obtain the
support of the controllable class for the party in power; in short
because they are machine men and the needs of the machine are first and
imperative.
The extent to which some of these cabinet officers have been shifted
about is astonishing. Mr. Cortelyou for instance had been stenographer
and private secretary to President McKinley; and in a few years
thereafter filled the offices of Secretary of Commerce and Labor,
Postmaster General and Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Meyer was
Postmaster General under Roosevelt and Secretary of the Navy under Taft,
the next President. Moody from the place of Secretary of the Navy under
Roosevelt was suddenly jumped onto the bench and made Justice of the
Supreme Court. Charles Bonaparte was Attorney General when he was
shifted into the place of Secretary of the Navy. Now it is a sufficient
tax on human credulity to ask one to believe that the original
appointments of these men were made entirely because of fitness; but it
exceeds the limit when we are required to suppose that while in the
office of Postmaster General Mr. Cortelyou was really learning finance
and becoming fitted for Secretary of the Treasury, while Mr. Meyer in
the same Postmaster General’s office was becoming a great naval expert,
a real seadog justified to be “Ruler of Uncle Sam’s Navee.”
It is notorious that all state appointments by the governor are made not
for merit, but as a reward for political service, and invariably from
the members of the political oligarchy who procured the governor’s
election, or under their direction to members of their family or
backers. The results are often grotesque. Look for a moment at a batch
of state appointments; take the very first that happens to come to hand
from New York. State Tax Commissioner W. was formerly State Comptroller
and before that Postmaster. Election Superintendent R., formerly
Assistant District Attorney in New York City, was before that in the
Attorney General’s office in Albany and Superintendent of State Prisons.
R. 2 was recently Collector of the Port of Rochester; he now holds a
state office. Another couple:--V. has been successively Commissioner of
Excise, Commissioner of Police, Commissioner of Docks, Police Justice,
Commissioner of Elections; Superintendent of Public Buildings;
Superintendent of Elections. H. has held the offices of Deputy Collector
of Internal Revenue; member of Board of Alderman; Grain Superintendent;
Sealer of Weights and Measures; Superintendent of Streets and Clerk of
the Court. The practice is the same in all states and cities, and these
five instances could be easily increased to five thousand and with time
and research to five hundred thousand. In fact it is rare to find a man
of over thirty-five years of age in public office who has not filled
several entirely different political employments. It is said that one of
the members of the New York Constitutional Convention of 1846 proposed
that public officials should be selected by lot; and it is doubtful
whether in some cases the result would not be an improvement on the
present system. Is it any wonder that government administration is a
joke, an object of scorn to business men? Efficiency cannot be expected
in any department of government or business whose chief is ignorant of
the details of its operations. And yet so demoralizing has been the
effect of the manhood suffrage political tradition, so accustomed are
not merely the politicians but the public to the vicious practice of
distributing these most important offices as rewards for political work,
that the proposal to require them to be filled by men of experience and
training in the work of their respective offices would probably be met
with derisive laughter in every governmental department.
Let us not flatter ourselves, therefore, that under a manhood suffrage
government any real improvement can be obtained by the mere expedient so
often urged of filling the offices by appointment instead of by
election. Experience teaches the contrary. At present the appointments
to office, whether made by the president, governor or other officer are
of the same general character as those made by popular election; that
is, they are nearly all bad; the spirit of Jackson still controls most
of them; the spirit of politics, of deference to the will of the
machine, of compliance with the theory on which universal suffrage
stands; the theory that participation in the activities, honors and
emoluments of government is a sort of perquisite of citizenship or
privilege in which each citizen is entitled to share. This pernicious
theory must be forever cast out of our political system and replaced by
the true one; namely, that both the vote and office are to be entrusted
only to the qualified, before we can expect permanent improvement in the
administration of public affairs. In vain we may continue the long
struggle to abolish the spoils system as long as every candidate from
the president down to constable has to face the demands of the
insatiable regular army of the politicians. Not only every legislative
candidate, but every aspirant for a judicial or administrative office,
has now in one way or another to satisfy these disciplined gangs of
political marauders, their bosses and their machines. These hireling
bands must be disfranchised and disbanded and the institution of manhood
suffrage overthrown before efficiency will become an established feature
of our governmental system.
Of the fact that a pure and efficient administration of public affairs
is possible there cannot be the slightest doubt. The result was actually
achieved in this country in federal administration by President
Washington, and continued in the forty years that intervened till
Jackson’s time. It has also been accomplished by ourselves in the
Philippines, by the French and Dutch in some of their colonies, and
notably by Great Britain in all parts of the world. Read for instance
the report from which the following is an extract, made by Alleyne
Ireland, a specialist in Colonial affairs, appointed Colonial
Commissioner in the Far East, by the University of Chicago. (_North
American Review, May, 1918._)
“Administration as a non-political function of government is a
conception unfamiliar to the American mind; and I propose to
describe in outline how administrative problems appear to the eye
of a man who has spent twenty years in studying those forms of
government in which administration is conducted on a non-political
basis. I have observed in actual operation ten distinct forms of
government which conform to this condition. They are the Crown
Colony System in various British Colonies; the Central Government
of India; the Indian Provincial System in Burma; the system of
Protected Native States in the Malay Peninsula; the Government of a
Commercial Company in Borneo; the Rule of an Independent White Raja
in Sarawak; the early American Government in Mindanao; limited
Parliamentary Government in British Guiana and Barbados; the French
Colonial System in Indo-China; and the Dutch Colonial System in
Java. In the countries I have named there are administered the
public affairs of more than 300,000,000 people. Although these
governments have been constantly attacked on the ground of their
lack of a popular political element it is the general verdict of
those who have observed them in action that, leaving political
participation aside, they furnish this vast population with a
larger measure of the tangible fruits of good government than is
enjoyed by any people under the more ‘liberal’ constitutions of
Europe and America.... The influence exerted upon policy by the one
and by the other of these two modes of procedure differs
profoundly. In the United States the matter is decided, initially,
by some hundreds of men, and many having strong political motives
for taking a particular view; in India the matter is decided,
initially, by six men, each of whom is a trained and experienced
administrator, and none of whom has any electorate to please, any
powerful business interest to placate, or any political party to
support. In the former instance the veto rests with one man who may
have no more than an amateur’s acquaintance with the question
involved; in the latter the veto also rests with one man, but this
man is, in practice, guided by the advice of the India Council, a
body of from ten to fourteen men, sitting in London, composed as to
the majority, of ex-Indian officials of long service and varied
administrative experience.”
We are not lacking in material in America; we have the best in the
world; energetic, honest, upright, clear-headed, healthy, vigorous,
disinterested, patriotic, well-educated men; noble fellows, plenty of
them; eager for work; but they are not in politics and never will be
there under the present vile régime. It is just because they prize honor
and reputation that they stay out of politics. Bryce truly says that
“the American system does not succeed in bringing the best men to the
top. Yet in Democracy more perhaps than in other governments, seeing it
is the most delicate and difficult of governments, it is essential that
the best men should come to the top.” What prevents our best men from
coming to the top? What prevents our having in this country the purity
and efficiency witnessed by Mr. Ireland in ten different jurisdictions?
Principally, our political spoils system, whose source and support are
manhood suffrage and the controllable vote. Secondarily, our failure to
recognize formally and actually the principle of efficiency as the prime
essential in government. Such recognition will neither be genuine nor
effective unless it begins with requiring an efficient electorate. After
that what remains to be done will be comparatively easy and natural.
Without it, the cause of substantial reform is practically hopeless.